Primary
''gambol'' ▫ᴱᴺ｜Definition｜1st｜20250816013808-00-⌔
gambol - Wiktionary, the free dictionary
English
Verb
gambol (third-person singular simple present gambols, present participle (US) gamboling or (UK) gambolling, simple past and past participle (US) gamboled or (UK) gambolled)
- (intransitive) To move about playfully; to frolic.
- ✤ The lawn spread freely onward, as of old, over which, in sweet company, he had once gambolled.1
- ✤ At our old pastimes in the hall
We gambol’d, making vain pretence
Of gladness, with an awful sense
Of one mute Shadow watching all.2- ✤ […] she remains near him to suckle him and teach him to choose the delicious grasses of the meadow, in which he gambols until he is grown.3
- ✤ And, in very truth, run and leap he did, gambolling wildly down the stretch of lawn outside the long window.4
- ✤ In the ecstasy of that thought they gambolled round and round, they hurled themselves into great leaps of excitement.5
- ✤ [The whales] quite enjoyed themselves gamboling freely among the waves in the sunshine.6
- ✤ Three girls moved across the billiard-table lawn of a great manor house, circling and swarming about a common center of gravity like gamboling sparrows.7
- ✤ They were in the white wood/Gamboling out to picnic8
- (UK, West Midlands) To do a forward roll.
Noun
gambol (plural gambols)
- An instance of running or skipping about playfully.
- ✤ Heere hung those lipps, that I haue kist I know not how oft. VVhere be your Iibes now? Your Gambals? Your Songs? Your flashes of Merriment that were wont to set the Table on a Rore?9
- ✤ When his gambols were over, I looked at the paper, and, to speak the truth, found myself not a little puzzled at what my friend had depicted.10
- An instance of more general frisking or frolicking.
- ✤ There was a delicious sensation of mingled security and awe with which I looked down, from my giddy height, on the monsters of the deep at their uncouth gambols.11
- ✤ The season of salad days has been rightly called a season of folly—rightly, because nature wisely intended salad days for folly, and we are wise to regard them as a time for folly. But are we wise when, halting upon the crutches age finds convenient after the gambols of youth have lost their attractions, we condemn this season of harmless folly to perpetual reprobation?12
Etymology
From earlier gambolde, from Middle French gambade (modern gambade).
Pronunciation
Printed 2026-06-28.
(echo:: @ ⌗)
Link to original Footnotes
1835: William Gilmore Simms, The Partisan: A Romance of the Revolution, chapter XI, page 134 (Harper) ↩
1850, [Alfred, Lord Tennyson], “Canto XXX”, in In Memoriam, London: Edward Moxon, […], →OCLC, page 48: ↩
1907, Paul Lafargue, The rights of the horse, page 160: ↩
1920, Agatha Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, London: Pan Books, published 1954, page 139: ↩
1943 November – 1944 February (date written; published 1945 August 17), George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], Animal Farm […], London: Secker & Warburg, published May 1962, →OCLC: ↩
1948, F. H. Lyon, chapter 5, in Kon-Tiki, translation of original by Thor Heyerdahl, →ISBN, page 143: ↩
1995, Neal Stephenson, *The Diamond Age […] *, New York: Bantam Spectra, →ISBN, page 259: ↩
2012, ミラクルミュージカル, “Murders”, in Hawaii: Part II: ↩
c. 1599–1602 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Tragedie of Hamlet, Prince of Denmarke”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward] Blount, published 1623, →OCLC, [Act V, scene i], page 278, column 1: ↩
1843, Edgar Allan Poe, The Gold Bug, page 10: ↩
1819 June 23, Geoffrey Crayon [pseudonym; Washington Irving], “The Voyage”, in The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., number I, New York, N.Y.: […] C[ornelius] S. Van Winkle, […], →OCLC, page 14: ↩
1874 October, “Salad Days”, in The American Educational Monthly, page 462: ↩
Secondary
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